What to do when other people are drainin me?

Our relationships are particularly important at the moment. How do you deal with the fact that people are in some way not good for me and it is not up to me?

When you develop as a human being, you quickly learn that what upsets us in others is often just a reflection of ourselves. We often get upset with others about what we find annoying about ourselves, what we have repressed or what we do not allow ourselves to do. And when we understand this, we usually become more understanding and kinder with other people. And through this, by the way, we often become kinder with ourselves as well.

But there are also the other cases: It doesn't always have everything to do with us. Sometimes other people are just thoughtless, inconsiderate, they press (consciously or unconsciously) on our sore spots. Or in some other way they cross our boundaries in an unpleasant way.

The big difference is the art to distinguish:
- Is it my stuff that I project into the others?
- Or is the other person just in some way not good for me?

It's surprisingly hard to tell them apart. Even for those of us who are aware of these projection stories. After all, knowing about them does not protect us 100% from our own blind spots, which each of us actually has ... and yes, this also applies to the most advanced among us.
But let's assume that someone is treating us strangely and that the whole thing in this case really has nothing or only little to do with ourselves.
What do I do then? How do I deal with it? What do I do when people are in some way not good for me and I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with me?
You have three options here:

1.) Leave

2.) Love

3.) Change
So either you get out of the situation if you can (Leave it). Or you learn to love the thing or at least to accept it (Love it). Or you change the situation if it is possible for you (Change it).

Lets say ou decide to Leave it...
Of course, it is not always possible to get out of the situation. But often exactly that is the best and easiest solution, even if you sometimes have to curb your pride a bit.
Just avoid the conflict situation or make sure that you don't have any more stress with the other person in the future.
That applies in small ways: For example, if you just let someone, if he/she pushes in front of you in the supermarket. Or on a larger scale: If my great-aunt picks on me every time I visit her, then I won't go anymore. There are some things you don't have to do to yourself, even if your guilty conscience then perhaps gets a bit torn. Or if my colleague Dora messes up my everyday office life with her passive-aggressive attitude, then I simply leave the office.
Being as flexible as a willow in the wind. Simply leave or avoid unpleasant situations. That's not always cowardly, but often simply the smart way out. Of course you shouldn't always give in. But you also don't have to fight every fight.
A side note on this topic: The more I invest in myself and in my professional and personal further training, the more opportunities open up in life. In other words, the more I learn and the more things I can do, the more freedom I have in life.
If you find yourself in a situation from which you cannot get out of constraints, then this may have to do with the fact that you have neglected your further development and therefore have too few opportunities to escape.
The same applies to investing in good relationships with other people. If you have a good network of friends, acquaintances and colleagues, you have more opportunities to steer your life in a different direction.
Often people have to stay in a job for financial reasons, because they have no professional alternatives or no network. Those who regularly train themselves - even alongside their job - and wisely expand and increase their value as an employee, therefore invest directly in their freedom. The more interesting and useful things I can and know, the more interesting I become for other employers and the easier I can change my job if some colleague poisons my workplace.
So personal and professional growth as well as good relationships create freedom. So ask yourself: What would I have to learn, find out, be able to do or know to become freer and more flexible in life and have more choices? And how could I expand my network in a good giving and taking sense? Take that pen now and answer these questions in this moment!

Let's move on to the next possibility for dealing with the fact that other people are not good for you:

Love it.

For many, this is the hardest task of all: learning to accept or even love things that cannot be changed.
Whereby accepting does not necessarily always mean "approving". It rather means that you stop fighting, that you give up resistance, that you surrender. That one makes peace with reality. Although this is actually not so easy.
But it is like this: many problems or conflicts vanish into thin air when you stop fighting. Not always. But surprisingly often.
What helps a lot with "Love it" is a certain thought. The thought is:
"This is just training for me now." or " This is placed here in front of me, for me!"
Or if you'd rather take a more spiritual approach, just say, "This person is an angel sent to me to understand or learn something specific. "This is guidance from above..."
You can use everything to learn as a human being, to develop your personality and to grow. Even people who make your life difficult.

I cover more on this Topic in my bestselling book #transwording.
And imagine you would walk up to your enemy, give him or her a big kiss on the cheek and then say: "Thank you for helping me grow as a human being through your way."
Conflict and interpersonal difficulties are always training.
If you can see it that way, you automatically stop fighting too much and you can take advantage of the difficulties with the other person. See the conflict as a chance and as an opportunity to learn something. By doing so you automatically leave the victim role behind and take responsibility for yourself. And this often shifts the balance of power in a conflict and often lets the relationship problem collapse like a house of cards.
How do you change your perspective and put on the "this is training" glasses?

You can ask yourself questions like this:
- What can I learn in this situation?

- What would be the first step to learn this?
- What would I have to do, be able to do, comprehend/understand/learn so that this thing - here would no longer be a challenge for me?
- What can I learn from this person?
- What is the good thing about this situation?
- In what way could it help me later?

That is, to change the situation. Because there are situations that you cannot leave and that are so hard to handle that you cannot reinterpret them as training. In this case you have to become active and change something.
The first step here should be a clarifying conversation. Often you have to jump over your own shadow, especially if you have the feeling that you have not started or that you have really not done anything wrong.
But pride is completely out of place here. If you suffer from a situation, it is your responsibility and task to change something for the better. With pride you don't punish the other person, but you punish yourself, because you prolong your own suffering.
What can be helpful in such a conversation are the principles of non-violent communication. This does not always help, but it increases the chance that a clarifying conversation will really take place.
What can also help you here is the following principle of communication:
First try to understand and only then to be understood.
That means, address the conflict directly and ask the other person for his opinion on the matter. And then listen REALLY, LISTEN. Ask for clarification. Without justifying yourself. Without counter-arguments. Really give your counterpart room to talk. And only when you have really understood his point of view completely will you describe your perspective on the situation. That sounds easy in theory, but in practice it is of course a damn tough job. That's why it's best to practice this kind of listening with a familiar person in a kind of role play before you go into the real situation.
Often, of course, all talking doesn't help either. Sometimes you just don't understand each other. Or the pain is already too big and the earth is too burnt. Or the other person doesn't want to resolve the conflict at all because he gets some kind of satisfaction or profit from it.
Then the usual rules from the martial arts apply:
Act decisively, without hesitation and with all the means at your disposal. Do not threaten, but act purposefully and effectively. Settle the conflict as quickly, hard and with as many means as possible. Do not duck your head, do not hesitate and do not hope for improvement without doing anything.
The aim now is to end the conflict as hard and as quickly as possible in your favour by using all means possible. Of course I am not talking about physical violence here, even if my description sounds martial. I mean that you use all your non-violent possibilities in a concentrated way:
The works council.
Open letters or other public escalation of the conflict
Forming alliances
Seek support from colleagues or friends
Seek allies and protectors
and so on, and so on etc...
If you have tried everything else, you have to straighten your back and fight. And then you should also try to finish the fight as soon as possible so that you don't get too many wounds yourself.
Luckily, this whole Love it, leave it or change it has to be used relatively seldom. Because most of the time a conflict with other people has - at least to a certain extent - to do with ourselves :-). But if you are really sure that your vest is white, then maybe use this 3-sentence of personality development as a guideline for your actions. I use this idea all the time and the 3 possibilities have always been an excellent guide for me.